• What is the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammars?

-DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR:- A descriptive grammar looks at the way a language is actually used by its speakers and then attempts to analyse it and formulate rules about the structure. Descriptive grammar does not deal with what is good or bad language use; forms and structures that might not be used by speakers of Standard English would be regarded as valid and included. It is a grammar based on the way a language actually is and not how some think it should be.
- PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR:- A prescriptive grammar lays out rules about the structure of a language. Unlike a descriptive grammar it deals with what the grammarian believes to be right and wrong, good or bad language use; not following the rules will generate incorrect language. Both types of grammar have their supporters and their detractors, which in all probability suggests that both have their strengths and weaknesses. Writers were concerned to make rules about how people ought to speak and write, in conformity with some standard they held dear. They were not concerned with ascertaining first how people actually did speak and write.

[1] Descriptive grammar: a grammar that "describes" how language is used by its speakers.

For example, I am older than her.

Explanation: Subject pronouns (she, he, it, and so on) are paired with a verb, whereas object pronouns (her, him, it, and so on) are not. Since the phrase "than her" doesn't have a verb we can see or hear, some speakers choose an object pronoun in the context.

[2] Prescriptive grammar: a grammar that "prescibes" how speakers should use the language.

For example, I am older than she (is older).

Explanation: 'than' is a conjunction; it joins two like forms: "I am older" with "she is older", giving "I am older than she is older", but speakers omit the last part "is older" because it's redundant. Nevertheless, according to prescriptive grammar, 'than' functions as a conjunction, so speakers should use "she" in that context.

• Actuation: Why did /k/ palatalize before certain front vowels? PrsE: cheese, German käse English/Norse doublets shirt/skirt?

• What is the difference between internal and external histories of a language?

The rise and development of any language is inseparably connected with the relation of its speakers with the setting in which the speakers function. The history of a language must include, therefore, not only the evolution of the structure of the language but also an account of the external forces (political, economic, social, cultural, spiritual, etc.) which have influenced this evolution in the course of time. Thus,

a) The internal history of English will include all aspects of the development of the language structure: i.e. the evolution of phonology (and writing), grammar, vocabulary and semantics.

b) The external history of English deals with all non-structural factors which have exerted certain influence on the development of the language. These factors can be of a different nature:

• Political: invasions, wars, the formation of states...
• Social: changes in social structure and in social prestige...
• Economic: uprising, industrialisation and all motivated social movements...
• Scientific: new inventions, for example, requiring new terms to refer to them.
• Cultural events or changes in ideologies: the introduction of the printing, the Christianisation of the country (with its new ideas and literature), the Renaissance, the Enlightment,...

The extent to which the external factors contribute to the development of a language varies from one period to another and from one place to another. And the extent to which different levels/areas of language structure undergo modifications, as a result of the influence of external factors, also varies.( As a rule, the area which is most affected is the vocabulary).

"A History of English: Notes on External History" Francico Fernández

• Look up Neogrammarians and lexical diffusion. Why are they often found in the same paragraph or chapter?

Neogrammarians were a German school of linguists. According to its hypothesis, a diachronic sound change affects simultaneously all words in which its environment is met, without exception.

Lexical diffusion:

A phoneme is modified in a subset of the lexicon, and spreads gradually to other lexical items. All sound changes originate in a single word or a small group of words and then spread to other words with a similar phonological make-up, but may not spread to all words in which they potentially could apply.

The theory of lexical diffusion stands in contrast to the Neogrammarian hypothesis that a given sound change applies simultaneously to all words in which its context is found. But both of them are interested in sound change.

• Look up social norm-enforcement, childish errors and slips of the tongue. What have they to do with language change?

Childish errors: children learn words by sound not as they are written. Ex. "which art": we chart

Slips of the tongue: (or phenomenon of parapraxes) is an accidental and usually trivial mistake in speaking.

Implications:

• Word-substitution mistakes: problems in planning speech than problems in thought or attention.
• Speech errors are not caused by a person rushing through word preparation or omitting a sub-process.
• Looking at an object is not guarantee that a person will say it correctly

• Why does Milroy say that sound change appears to have no "obvious function or rational motivation" (146)?

Milroy says that, because it is impossible to see any progress or benefit to the language or its speakers –the use of one vowel- sound rather than another is purely arbitrary: there is apparently no profit and no loss.

• What is/are the main difference/s between Milroy’s approach and that of the Neogrammarians (147-148)?

When speakers are excluded from their languages, it becomes easy to believe that linguistic change is language-internal, independent of speakers and imperceptible. For the Neogrammarians it proceeds "with blind necessity". Sociolinguistic approaches, which necessarily deal with speakers, are not very likely to give support to the idea of "blind necessity".

The Neogrammarians scholars depended on documentary records of (of ten ancient) languages and could not adequately observe language in the community as we do today. They could not identify change in progress at early stages and in localised varieties.

Present-day sociolinguistic research differs from the Neogrammarians position in a number of fundamental respects. For example the data-base. Scholars now have access to bilingual and multilingual speech communities. These approaches strongly question the principle that linguistic change is best studied by reference to monolingual states, as the Neogrammarians. The research on social dialectology does not focus on whole languages, but on localized varieties in regional speech communities. The contrast with orthodox historical methodology is quite evident. Milroy has tried to combine this type of research with a theory of language standardization. Changes in entering supralocal or standard varieties of the kind studied by the Neogrammarians. No dealing with well-defined linguistic entities regarded as uniform and developing methods of analysing and describing the variable states. To conclude, there are great differences in data-base and method between Neogrammarian and sociolinguistic studies of sound change.

• According to Milroy, what is the language change dependent on (149)?

After the language change is produced in a community the most important thing is how it is maintained in the system after it has been accepted. Therefore it depends on social acceptance.

• Why does Milroy say that sound change actually doesn’t exist (150)?

Speech "sounds" do not physically change: what happens is that in the course of time one sound is substituted for another; speakers of a given dialect gradually and variably begin to use sound X in environments where formely used sound Y.

• Why does Milroy disagree with the Neogrammarians when they say that sound change is "blind" (150)?

Because languages don’t change, it is speakers who change languages. Sound change is a social phenomenon. It passes from speaker to speaker and from group to group, and it is social gradualness.

• What is meant by "lexical diffusion" (151)?

It is also a type of sound change like regular sound change. The main differences are that while the new form as result of gradual phonetic change differs only slightly from the older one in lexical diffusion it differs markedly. Lexical diffusion refers to sound changes, which spread gradually through the lexicon and this is contrary to the assumption that all items in the affected set change at the same time.

It is another pattern of language change. The displacement of one dialect by another which is, for some reason, socially dominant at some particular time.

For example, there is evidence from recordings of persons born around 1860 which indicate that much New Zealand English in the 19^th century was southern British in type, and that it was displaced by an Australian type.

Community or vernacular norms are those observed by speakers and maintained by communities often in opposition to standardizing norms. Those norms characterise dialects as a whole.

• What does Milroy mean when he says that h-dropping may not ever reach "completion" (153)?

Because as language stability depends on speaker-agreement on the norms of language, and linguistic change is brought about by changes in agreement on norms. In this solidary change it should be noted that the starting point and the end point of change are not necessarily uniform states. A change can persist as a variable state for seven or eight centuries without ever going to completion in the traditional sense.

• Explain what Milroy means by "speaker innovation" and change in the system. How are they connected (153)?

By speakers innovation he means that any innovation in language is an act of the speaker whereas a change is manifested within the language system. Sometimes an innovation is observed but it is not known that it will lead to a change, but changes have to do with synchronic variability. We can think of sound change as moving gradually through a population of speakers, assuming a regular sociolinguistic pattern. Innovations occur and they can be interpreted as manifesting the socially gradual diffusion of changes.

• Why isn’t borrowing from one language to another and the replacement of one sound by another through speaker innovation with a language as radically different as the Neogrammarians posited (154-6)?

Because sound changes in progress are often traceable to borrowings from neighbouring dialects. Each single event of borrowing into a new speech community is as just an innovation as the presumed original event in the original speech community.

• What is necessary for a sound to spread (157)?

The implementation of a sound change depends on the borrowing of an innovation: all sound change is implemented by being passed from speaker to speaker, and it is not a linguistic change until it has been adopted by more than one speaker. A change is not a change until it has assumed a social pattern of some kind in a speech community.

• Why does believing in the ideology of standardization lead to believing in "blind necessity" (158)?

Because standard languages are created by the imposition of political and military power, hence the sound patterns in them and the changes that come about do not come about through blind necessity, and they are not wholly explainable by reference to phenomena internal to the structure of language. The idea that the sound changes differentiating these well-defined socially-based human intervention is absurd, it is another consequence of believing in the ideology of standardization.

• What does Milroy mean by "clean" and "dirty" data (158)?

He refers with clean data to those provided by standard languages, those already normalized; and the vernaculars that we encounter in the speech community, which are relatively intractable are dirty data.